Darla K. Munroe

Urban land teleconnections and sustainability

This paper introduces urban land teleconnections as a conceptual framework that explicitly links land changes to underlying urbanization dynamics. We illustrate how three key themes that are currently addressed separately in the urban sustainability and land change literatures can lead to incorrect conclusions and misleading results when they are not examined jointly: the traditional system of land classification that is based on discrete categories and reinforces the false idea of a rural–urban dichotomy; the spatial quantification of land change that is based on place-based relationships, ignoring the connections between distant places, especially between urban functions and rural land uses; and the implicit assumptions about path dependency and sequential land changes that underlie current conceptualizations of land transitions. We then examine several environmental “grand challenges” and discuss how urban land teleconnections could help research communities frame scientific inquiries. Finally, we point to existing analytical approaches that can be used to advance development and application of the concept.

Changing Rural Landscapes in Albania: Cropland Abandonment and Forest Clearing in the Postsocialist Transition

Postsocialist transitions in eastern Europe have focused on the establishment of private property rights, often to the exclusion of other aspects of rural land-use systems. After the demise of socialism in 1991, Albania privatized virtually all agricultural land by redistributing formerly collective land on an equal per capita basis. This article examines the dramatic effects of the transition in general and the land reform in particular on Albanias rural landscapes. A village-level survey was conducted to analyze household resources and constraints. The survey was integrated with data derived from satellite image interpretation and geographic information systems to develop statistical models of two key land-cover changes of interest: the abandonment of cropland and forest-cover loss. Statistical corrections were implemented to control for cross-scale interactions and geocomputation was employed to assess the goodness of fit of the models and the robustness of the results. Findings indicate that most cropland abandonment at the onset of the transition period was concentrated in marginal, less densely populated areas. More recently, abandonment was increasingly shaped by economic returns from cultivation and the growing competition with nonfarm livelihood strategies. Land fragmentation, an outcome of Albanias land reform, was associated with greater abandonment in the later stages of transition. Patterns of forest clearing were subsistence driven and found around populated areas in the period immediately following the collapse of socialism, whereas more commercial clearing patterns emerged over time. Because of the range of social and environmental impacts of large-scale policy shifts, studies of postsocialist landscapes necessitate a multiscale spatial framework.

Towards a comprehensive framework for modeling urban spatial dynamics

The increasing availability of spatial micro data offers new potential for understanding the micro foundations of urban spatial dynamics. However, because urban systems are complex, induction alone is insufficient. Nonlinearities and path dependence imply that qualitatively new dynamics can emerge due to stochastic shocks or threshold effects. Given the policy needs for managing urban growth and decline and the growing desire for sustainable urban forms, models must be able not only to explain empirical regularities, but also characterize system-level dynamics and assess the plausible range of outcomes under alternative scenarios. Towards this end, we discuss a comprehensive modeling approach that is comprised of bottom-up and top-down models in which both inductive and deductive approaches are used to describe and explain urban spatial dynamics. We propose that this comprehensive modeling approach consists of three iterative tasks: (1) identify empirical regularities in the spatial pattern dynamics of key meso and macro variables; (2) explain these regularities with process-based micro models that link individual behavior to the emergence of meso and macro dynamics; and (3) determine the systems dynamical equations that characterize the relationships between micro processes and meso and macro pattern dynamics. Along the way, we also clarify types of complexity (input and output) and discuss dimensions of complexity (spatial, temporal, and behavioral). While no one to date has achieved this kind of comprehensive modeling, meaningful progress has been made in characterizing and explaining urban spatial dynamics. We highlight examples of this work from the recent literature and conclude with a discussion of key challenges.

Exploring the determinants of spatial pattern in residential land markets: amenities and disamenities in Charlotte, NC, USA

In this paper I present an empirical analysis of spatial patterns in land markets in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, between 2000 and 2003. It is well known that land markets reflect a variety of spatial factors that collectively influence market value, yet it is empirically difficult to sort out the relative contribution of overall and localized, the spatial and aspatial determinants of sales prices. Some of the classical assumptions about urban form that feed into hedonic analyses of land markets are explored. Then, three analyses are presented: simple visualization of single-family residential sales prices with regard to factors likely to influence land value, univariate and bivariate measures of spatial autocorrelation, and, finally, spatial econometric hedonic modeling.

Current and future challenges in land-use science

Beginning in January 2014, we took over the editorial leadership of the Journal of Land Use Science (JLUS). Our primary objective is to develop the journal further into the leading journal for land-use science. We would like to take this opportunity to thank Dr Richard Aspinall for the service he provided to the land-use science community in launching this journal in 2006, and for his commitment in managing it for the last 8 years. We would also like to reaffirm the goals and editorial vision he set (Aspinall, 2006), as well as highlight a selected array of new research directions and priorities. In this editorial, we will briefly review some important articles that have demonstrated the stated goals of the journal to date. Then, we discuss new areas for publication by highlighting key contemporary research questions in land-use science with scientific and policy relevance.

The Role of Intraindustry Trade in Interregional Trade in the Midwest of the US

The subject of international trade among countries has long been of concern to policy makers and academics alike. As economic activity has become more and more international in scope, the potential impact of international trade on regional economic growth and income distribution has become central to many studies. Within economics, the study of industrial organization, particularly with respect to imperfect competition and economies of scale and agglomeration, has influenced developments in international trade theory in the past few decades. In identifying the determinants of trade among countries, issues such as market size, relative level of Gross National Product (GNP) per capita, market structure, etc., have all become important, as well as the more traditional determinants of trade, e.g., relative capital and labor endowments. Furthermore, there has been an increasing realization of the role and influence of location in explaining trade and trade patterns (see Krugman, 1990; Fujita et al., 1999; Hanson, 1996; Martin, 1999, Venables et al., 2003)

Tradeoffs between Rural Development Policies and Forest Protection: Spatially Explicit Modeling in the Central Highlands of Vietnam

Alleviating rural poverty remains an important objective of development policy in many areas of the world. Traditional means of increasing rural livelihoods such as increased investments in agricultural intensification measures can have disastrous impacts on natural resources such as forests, by greatly increasing incentives for clearing. We use a spatially explicit model of land use in the Dak Lak province in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. Land use is modeled using a reduced-form multinomial logit model. Policy simulations demonstrate that the adoption of yield-increasing inputs requires concomitant forest protection policies, both in terms of forest area and of spatial configuration. (JEL Q23, R11)

Environmental Politics After Nature: Conflicting Socioecological Futures

This article is about the logic and dynamics of environmental politics when the environment at stake is profoundly socioecological. We investigate the socioecological forests of the coalfields of Appalachian Ohio, where once decimated forests are again widespread. Conceptualizing forests as power-laden relationships among various people, trees, and other nonhumans, we identify multiple distinct forest types that currently exist as both material reality and future vision. Each forest is characterized by antagonistic ideas about ideal species composition, structure, and function and about specific actions and actors deemed necessary and threatening for the forests persistence. Each forest represents a very different vision for how socioecological relationships should be fostered. We argue, first, that broad acceptance that the environment is fundamentally socioecological does not mark the end of environmentalism. Rather, urges to environmentalism proliferate as people aim to foster the social natures they envision—and do so through interventions that are internal to what the forest is and does. Second, the proliferation of environmentalisms generates new forms of environmental conflict, which manifests over what sorts of social natures can and should exist (i.e., what they should do and for whom) and which interventions are beneficial or harmful to the survival and proliferation of the forest in the future. Ultimately, we demonstrate that socioecological futures are being shaped today through political struggle not over naturalness but over what should be done, by whom, to bring about which social natures, and to the benefit of whom (human and nonhuman).

The relationships between biomass burning, land-cover/-use change, and the distribution of carbonaceous aerosols in mainland Southeast Asia: a review and synthesis

Biomass burning is a major source of black carbon aerosols. These aerosols have negative human health impacts and can affect the radiation budget and climate both directly and indirectly. Uncertainty regarding the contribution of biomass burning to the concentration of aerosols is higher in Southeast Asia than in some other regions of substantial biomass burning because of other sources of pollution such as significant fossil fuel combustion. The shifting agricultural tradition is still evident in the region. Significant expansion of cash crop production is also associated with biomass burning, as is the seasonal burning of crop residue. The effects of such land-use processes extend into the atmosphere, and localized events have regional and global implications for air-pollution-related health effects and climate. This article synthesizes the issue of biomass burning and aerosols in the context of land-use practices in Southeast Asia and makes suggestions of how to use available data sources in an integrated analysis.

Pattern-Based Evaluation of Peri-Urban Development in Delaware County, Ohio, USA: Roads, Zoning and Spatial Externalities

As urban areas continue to disperse and decentralize, new urban growth is increasingly occurring in peri-urban or rural areas beyond the suburban fringe, but within commuting distance of metropolitan areas. This trend is referred to in a variety of ways, including urban expansion, urban dispersion, or peri-urbanization. Many communities are concerned with seemingly uncontrolled urban sprawl and expansion into peri-urban areas for a variety of reasons, including the fiscal, environmental and social impacts associated with urban land-use change. Urbanization can alter major biogeochemical cycles, add or remove species, and have drastic effects on habitat (Vitousek et al. 1997), particularly when such development is low-density and scattered (Theobald 2004). Urban decentralization can also decimate the inner-city tax base (Downs 1999). Growth at the urban fringe, or in the rural portions of metropolitan counties, has greatly increased, and is of significantly lower density than the surrounding urbanized areas and clusters (Heimlich and Anderson, 2001). In Ohio, low-density development outside urbanized areas has increased from 58 to 72% of total land area between 1970 and 2000 (Partridge and Clark 2008).